“Great! And you can tell Daddy where we’re at and he’ll save us,” Ryan says, his confidence in his father strong as ever.
“Let’s get going then. Be really quiet, okay? And only talk when I tell you that you can.”
“Got it, Rory,” he says. “You can count on me,” he says. My smile becomes a real one.
I love this kid…13FBI Agent Gavin LodgeI down the last of my coffee, not even caring it’s so strong that there are grounds in the remnants sticking to the side of my cup. I need it this strong. I’m tired as hell. I crumble the foam cup, tossing it in the trashcan. Then, I adjust my jacket, before pushing through the doors that lead to the ICU lobby.
Whitefish, Montana isn’t much different from the town I grew up in. Small, barely a stoplight to its name and deceptively quiet. Since joining the FBI years ago I’ve learned that most of the shit I come across happens in Small Town, U.S.A., and by that, I mean all of it. The people I hunt are… monsters. Monsters are twisted and fucked in the head and like to blend in. They do this best in hole-in-the-wall towns like Whitefish. That’s my usual cases.
The case involving Westin Cross is not my usual. At first I thought it was just a run of the mill murder case. Then we traced a damn gun left in the truck back to an execution my people had linked to the Korean mob before the case went cold. I don’t know what kind of fuck-ups were in charge, but the assholes apparently thought a fire would ruin a gun. They were so sure of it, they didn’t even bother filing off the serial number, or removing bullet casings. The striations of the bullets matched exactly to that unsolved case. I’m not the one in charge of the original investigation, but these fuckers came into my territory and that put them on my radar and I’m not about to let it slide.
I look through the room and there are only two people in here. Men, close to my age, one maybe a bit older. Both hardened by life—you can tell that in others when you have the same symptoms yourself. The older one is the tallest, standing an inch or two above me. He’s got some salt mixed in with his dark hair and scruff on his face that’s at least a week old. He’s decked in biker gear, complete with the leather cut-off that declares him VP of the Savage MC. Motherfucker. The last thing I needed was this to become about a biker war with mafia ties.
The youngest of the two stands a solid six foot maybe even six-two. He’s got brown hair and looks entirely too pretty to be a biker, but there’s something about his face that says he’s seen life at its worst.
“Alexander?” I ask the question-not really a question—to the two, hold out my hand to shake, and wait for a response.
“Crusher,” the older one says, ignoring my hand. Fair enough. I draw it back and look him over.
“I’m Agent Lodge.”
“Figured that. It’s everything else I’m not entirely fucking sure of,” he replies, his tone hateful.
“That would be two of us, although I figure I know more than you.”
“That wouldn’t take very much. You feel like sharing it with me?”
I look around the room and frown.
“It’s not very private,” I tell him.
“I’m not about to leave my brother in this hellhole either. Especially if it’s just to go off to have coffee with a man I don’t know and don’t really care if I get to know—no offense,” he says, laying it out.
His attitude is not unexpected, his kind and mine don’t normally mix. Then again, I’m not the usual type of my kind. So, mostly I ignore his attitude.
“None taken. I guess we just get into it then.”
“I guess so,” Crusher says. I sit down and wait. Crusher remains standing, as does the man beside of him.
“Let’s start at the beginning. How did Westin Cross get on the bad side of Chul Pak?”
Silence.
“Listen boys, the way I got it figured, I have information you need. Your buddy in there, breathing by a machine, is not going to tell you shit. That means you need me a fuck of a lot more than I do you at this point. This is not even my case. So how about we stop the pissing match and seeing who has the bigger dick, because I’m fine with the size of mine and could give less than a shit about yours. You can either tell me what I ask, or I’ll just walk out of here. It doesn’t bother me a fuck either way,” I tell them, only partly lying.
“This is not your case?” Crusher asks, catching onto the one piece of hard information I gave him. He’s sharper than I might have given him credit for.